Thursday January 09, 2003

War is evil, end of story

Last night I forced myself into bed at 11:30. I'm trying to train myself to sleep and wake up at reasonable hours, instead of doing the 3:30 am -11:30 am sleep thing that I've had going this whole winter break. It wasn't easy. I tossed and turned, kept looking at my clock every twenty minutes, and finally got out of bed at 6:15 when my sister's alarm went off. I hope that I'll be tired enough tonight to actually fall asleep. This morning I watched The Fast and the Furious just for kicks. It was the only thing on tv worth watching. God knows I'm not into morning talk shows, and the news nowadays is just depressing. News channels just talk incessantly about our war-happy president who is determined to drop bombs no matter what the situation. Attack Iraq. Attack North Korea. Attack Afganistan. I say we just attack the whole damn world and get it over with. I hate to admit this, but it's times like these I wish I were a Canadian so that I wouldn't have so much blood on my hands. Never thought I'd ever write that, but W. is drowning my patriotism in a lake of fire, and won't let it surface until he's sure it's dead.

What I would like someone to explain to me is this --where is the line between victim and collateral damage? Why is the life of an Afghan worth only a fraction of the life of an American citizen (assuming the citizen is not of Middle-Eastern descent)? Why is death so much damn fun? Does God cheer every time a bomb drops on America's "enemies?"

I should not blog about such things, because it makes me angry. Inevitably someone will e-mail me something like "you stupid bitch they killed 3,000 Americans we should kill them all so they don't terrorize us anymore because they are evil and we are good and God is behind us so we need to rid the world of those Arabs." But this makes me wonder whether bombing people is the only way to get things done nowadays. People actually believe so --what does that say about how far we've fallen as a species? It's a slap in the face to the God that created us that chimpanzees are now more civilized than we are.

Maybe I should just stick to watching car-racing action movies and not worry myself over America's bloodlust and the world's impending doom. But I can't help but get that nasty queasy feeling every time I pick up the Plain Dealer, or overhear some idiot hooting and pumping his fist whenever "the boys are in action." Because when "the boys are in action" it means someone, some mother or child or elderly man walking though a village is going to die. I read a story a while back about a man who proposes a new stipulation for waging war against another country. The new requirement is that the president must first stab to death a man holding the secret code necessary for ordering military action. People scoffed at the idea, claiming that having to kill a man with his own hands would totally change the president's frame of mind, and he might decide not to drop bombs. The irony is fabulous. But if this new stipulation were put in place, I'd volunteer to hold the secret code. I wonder if W. could look me in the eye and kill me for the good of all America.

Or maybe he'd get Colin Powell to do his dirty work.